Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Our gospel passage speaks about the New Creation. Much speculation is made about the significance of the 72 other disciples Jesus sends ahead of His journey to Jerusalem. Genesis 10 mentioned 72 nations of the whole world after the flood. This would mean that the 72 prefigured all peoples preparing for Christ’s Second Coming. Another theory is that this 72 represents the distribution of power of Moses to the elders of Israel. In this case, a prophet greater than Moses established a new priestly people. Much less speculation, however, is given to the fact that Jesus sent them out two-by-two. Perhaps Christ is harkening back to Noah who holed up in the Ark and emerged as the righteous forebear of a new people. Here, two of each nation in the world are being brought into the Ark (which is the tomb) with the Lord to await a rising to a New Creation – one freed from sin and looking for a future of incorruption.

The 72 return to Jesus after heralding the Kingdom surprised that the power of Christ’s name has allowed them to perform mighty deeds. The excitement of being a disciple is in what they are doing. So Jesus admonishes them that the Kingdom of God is not about doing but about being. “Rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

Each one of us has signed his or her name in heaven through our share in the Paschal Mystery. Here St. Paul’s fixation on the crucifixion – his cruci-fixation – is met in what Michael Gorman calls Pauline cruciformity. “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). Therefore “the world” is now meaningless for the Christian, just as their focus on the Cross is an incomprehensible symbol for outsiders. The Cross makes us a New Creation. Marius Victorinus comments:

The strict meaning of new creation is the transformation of all things which will occur after the resurrection from the dead. For then the creation will be freed from sin’s burden and redeemed. Paul demonstrates that saving baptism is an image of things to come. In it, we put off the old nature and put on the new. And we, ridding ourselves of sin’s burden, receive the grace of the Spirit.

We have already become a New Creation. Let us live not with old anxieties or thinking we must earn the Father’s love. Christ has empowered us to live freedom and virtue, and true joy that seems crazy but is infectious.

Question: What religious practices do I perform that lead me into a mentality of primarily working to earn God’s love instead of responding in love to the Father?

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB